Tag Archives: beer reviews

clockwise from top left: jackalope taxidermy adorns the walls of the Jackalope taproom; mural on the wall outside the entrance – hard to miss if you’re driving south on 8th Ave.; the taproom on a Saturday afternoon

Jackalope Brewing Company is a small artisanal brewery and taproom ideally located on the edge of The Gulch in a small warehouse on 8th Ave. Jackalope opened their taproom on May 21, 2011 and began distributing their beer around town in January the following year – their beers can now be found at over 125 venues in Nashville and Middle Tennessee and as far afield as Chattanooga. The first female-owned brewery in Tennessee, Jackalope produces delicious beers and presents them with a unique, fanciful attitude.

from top left: menu on the mirror at Tennessee Brew Works; inside the taproom; one of the taproom’s many seating areas looks onto the brewery

One of the most recent arrivals on the Music City craft beer scene, Tennessee Brew Works inhabits a former printing warehouse on Ewing Avenue in what appears to be becoming Nashville’s brewery district: other denizens of the SoBro neighborhood include Yazoo, Jackalope, and Czann’s. TBW took possession of the property in February 2013, began brewing last August, and opened their Tennessee Taproom onsite in October.

In celebration of Nashville Craft Beer Week, three Black Abbey staff members who do not usually work on the brewing side of the business – although they all have home brewing backgrounds – poured pints of special small batch ales they made on successive nights at the brewery’s taproom. I am fortunate to live on the same side of town as Black Abbey, and was able to drop by the taproom each afternoon, have a pint, and talk to the brewer.

So many events, so little time. I was still feeling saturated from my tour of North Carolina when I arrived back home in Music City on the eve of Nashville Craft Beer Week 2014. In the end, I chose four events: a special appearance by New Belgium brewer Andy Sturm at 12 South Taproom on Thursday night, and three separate small batch releases at Black Abbey on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (I stopped by the Abbey and had a pint each afternoon: more about this in an upcoming post). Next year I will try to plan for this week more in advance.

Wicked Weed Brewing divides their beers into four regular draft categories on their menu and chalkboards: Hops Are Heresy, Beautiful and Belgian, Wicked from the Wood, and From the Funkatorium. They also list a fifth draft category for special, seasonal beers (during our visits they were rolling out a World Cup series), and a sixth category for beers available in bottles. During my two visits I was able to try 22 of these uniformly excellent brews, from all categories except bottles (although I did bring home three bottles that I haven’t cracked yet). Yet there were a few that I missed – some taps ran out and were being replaced with World Cup series beers, and at a certain point each day I had to give up taking notes and end my tasting session with a full glass.

With only a couple days to spend in Asheville on a family vacation, it was difficult to narrow down what beer spots to check out. When your very tolerant traveling companions are (understandably) not as obsessed with finding the best beer experiences to be had as you are, things can get tricky in a town like Asheville, especially when one of them is not even of drinking age. This narrowed down my choices to brewpubs – a term that is inadequate in the face of the subject of this post: gastropub? brewery/restaurants? – but even if I left out the taprooms that have limited food offerings, there were still too many to hit in the time I had, even if I did nothing but drink beer while I was there.

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Lines on Ale (1848)

Fill with mingled cream and amber
I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber
Through the chamber of my brain -
Quantest thoughts - queerest fancies
Come to life and fade away;
What care I how time advances?
I am drinking ale today.